[NBLUG/talk] My reasoning for trying LineageOS

Thu Apr 14 04:39:20 PDT 2022

Hi Rick,

Thanks for your perspective on LineageOS and your phone choices. Lots to 
digest!

My primary goal with switching to LineageOS is to be able to delete my 
Google account. I have a Google account to be able to use the Google 
Play store on my phone (a OnePlus 6T that I bought new at the TMobile 
Store for about $600 in December 2018) and access the one group that I 
am a member of that uses Google Groups to communicate (the North Bay 
Electric Auto Association - http://nbeaa.org/). I don't use my gmail 
account for any personal email, for that I use Sonic.

I am pretty new to NBLUG, so maybe the rest of you are more experienced 
at asking your friends and family to switch from WhatsApp to Signal or 
giving up conveniences like my credit union app (yes, I am also able to 
access online banking via the mobile website), but for me it is 
surprisingly difficult and that makes the process slow. I am definitely 
not an engineer, just a user of open source software. I do try to push 
into new-to-me areas of open source or give up corporate options, but 
usually with the goal of bringing others with me, not so much for 
personal projects.

I would prefer to keep my current phone for the time being, but that's 
awesome that you got a PinePhone! I have only heard about the PinePhone 
through a DistroWatch review 
(https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20211220#pinephone) and I have 
not seen one in person yet. From the review, the user experience sounded 
pretty rough.

I am curious as to the phone/mobile setups that other NBLUG members use 
- any other recommendations?

Derek & Tom: I tried to find a link to the T-Mobile plan that I have 
($15 per month, unlimited calls & text, 2 GB data per month, prepaid) 
and even asked their customer support chat (they were pretty unhelpful 
and told me to call their prepaid CS department). You may be right that 
I have a plan that has been phased out to new customers. There are cheap 
T-Mobile Connect plans (their new brand for prepaid service) with the 
$15 per month one looking pretty similar to mine, but it may not be so 
good depending on how they define "roaming" - 
https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect

Brad

On 4/13/22 12:00, talk-request at nblug.org wrote:
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>     1. LineageOS and competitors (was: talk Digest, Vol 195, Issue
>        3) (Rick Moen)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2022 18:51:54 -0700
> From: Rick Moen<rick at linuxmafia.com>
> To:talk at nblug.org
> Subject: [NBLUG/talk] LineageOS and competitors (was: talk Digest, Vol
> 	195, Issue 3)
> Message-ID:<20220413015153.GN3919 at linuxmafia.com>
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> (Please note renewed real Subject header.  Not a complaint, but IMO
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>
> Quoting Brad Morrison (bradmorrison at sonic.net):
>
>> Derek: I still have not made the plunge into LineageOS yet. Oddly
>> enough, having to ask my friends/relatives/housemates to switch from
>> WhatsApp to Signal or give up my access to my credit union's app is
>> more sticky than I thought...
> I find LineageOS (immediate successor to CyanogenMod) an interesting
> option, along with others, e.g., "/e/" (formerly Eelo), a fork of
> LineageOS using microG, a free and open-source implementation of Google
> APIs substituted for LineageOS's Google Play Services
> (https://www.androidauthority.com/google-play-services-1094356/) and
> with Mozilla Location Service for geolocation.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//e/_(operating_system)  
> There are also, predictably, other less-Googly Androids (Replicant,
> CopperheadOS and others).
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distributions
>
> Yr. present correspondent has considered smartphones, especially those
> with vendor OS loads, to be a privacy and security dumpster fire, and
> has considered the typically ~3 year software support to be laughably
> bad.  I've in fact, up to now, done something stubborn and impractical,
> in consequence:  Since buying my first unlocked Motorola RAZRv3 in
> ~2005, I've picked up new ones off eBay so as to always have one and a
> spare in the kitchen drawer, each costing me about $20; thus I've blown
> about $100 on phones over 17 years.
>
> Of course, a 2005-era RAZR flip phone doesn't do jack, except for voice
> telephone calls with superb audio quality, and simple SMS.  (Their
> ability to do MMS (modern SMS extensions) has lately been a bit of a
> problem, sometimes.)
>
> I am _definitely not_ suggesting anyone buy such a hilarously obsolete
> thing at any price in 2022, because the cellular telcos are EOLing 2G/3G
> service as fast as they can get away with.  Mine (T-Mobile), after
> trying to sell 2G/3G EOLing for years and getting too much pushback
> from, e.g., users of medical devices reporting over that, is finally
> serious, and going to swich it off so it can repurpose those frequencies
> for 5G on July 1st, 2022.  "This time for sure!"
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc4IFIXcDcs
>
> So, anyway, a couple of nights ago, I ordered a PinePhone Pro
> https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pro-explorer-edition/  -- which is
> as close to fully open hardware as is currently possible, prepload OS
> on the internal eMMC flash in Manjaro with Plasma (KDE5), and it has
> built-in ability to boot from microSD.[1]  (Its main market rival
> is the greatly more expensive Purism Librem 5, likewise primarily
> intended to run real Linuxes, not Android.)
>
> Popular alternatives on the PinePhone Pro include Maemo Leste and
> PostmarketOS -- both likewise real Linuxes, not Android -- plus it'll
> run various Android implementations, too, including, say, GloDroid or
> LineageOS.[1] So, IMO, one attraction of this flexibility is that I can
> have both things: my choice of preferred real-Linux distro (that I
> trust) for normal use, and then an alternate boot to a microSD card
> bearing some Android OS that I trust very little, that I use very
> specifically for questionable things like proprietary apps from Google
> Play Store, etc. -- thus keeping the two environments separate.
>
> (That's almost as good as what I did in the 2000s while working in the
> Linux department at Cadence Design Systems in San Jose, a place that
> loved Linux but had a serious Exchange Server habit.  There, I ran
> Debian with Window Maker on my company-issued ThinkPad T42p, then
> site-licensed VMware Workstation 5.x for Linux, then site-licensed WinXP
> Pro in the VM -- thus, real Redmondware for communication with Exchange
> Server and ActiveX-dependent intranets, but not allowing Redmondware
> access to anything on a valuable laptop but an isolated VM.)
>
> The notion of letting the second most nosy corporation in the world --
> Google/Alphabet -- have root on my computer (smartphone) -- which,
> AFAIK, is what you're effectively doing with Google Play Store -- gives
> me the heeby-jeebies, but giving them superuser on an effectively
> untrusted throwaway Android distro housing zero amount of my personal
> data, that I'm more OK with.
>
> BTW, obviously I don't know the situation with your credit union, but
> mine doesn't make anything require a mobile app.  All online banking can
> be reached (in my CU's case) from either a regular or a mobile-friendly
> Web site.
>
>   
> [1] Related to, but more hardware-endowed than, its predecessor and
> cousin, the PinePhone.
>
> [2] Support from both Linux distros and Android distros is a moving
> target, and is best checked on the PINE64 forums,
> https://forum.pine64.org/  .
>
>
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